by Blythe Baker
“Yeah,” I said with a nod, averting my gaze. He didn’t need to know that she’d broken into my house and tried to kill me. That part wasn’t important.
“You figured it out, didn’t you?” he asked, and I could hear the smirk in his voice.
I looked up and smiled reluctantly up at him. “Yeah…I did.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “I knew you would,” he said with a laugh.
His smile faded quickly enough, though. “Yeah…well, maybe your super sleuthing could be put to good use again,” he said. “There’s already a rumor going around this morning that a young girl was found dead in the lake.”
“Yeah, a college student,” I said, frowning. “She couldn’t have been older than twenty, maybe twenty one?”
His eyes widened. “Man, I shouldn’t be surprised that you know, but that’s almost spooky. Are you the psychic that the guy with the old school hat from the meeting went to go see?”
I laughed hollowly. “I’m definitely not psychic,” I said confidently. “She was found right outside the Lodge; my aunt owns it.”
“Oh, got it,” Mitch said with a nod. “So she told you about it?”
I rubbed the back of my neck nervously. “No…I’ve been staying there for the last week because – ” I caught myself before I mentioned Susan again. “Because my cousin just left town a few weeks ago and my aunt’s been kind of taking it hard. You know how it is. I haven’t wanted her to feel alone or anything.”
“You’re a good niece,” Mitch said.
I shrugged. “So, yeah…one of the guests found her this morning floating out in the water when they went outside to enjoy their coffee.”
He puffed out his cheeks, air expelling from his tight lips. “Can’t imagine that must’ve gone over well,” he said.
“No,” I said. “It was a long morning, once the police got there and everything.”
“You said she was in college?” Mitch asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Came on a weekend trip – ”
“With her friends from Denver, right?” Mitch asked, finishing my sentence. He scratched his chin. “This isn’t the first time a death’s happened on one of those trips. The kids take it upon themselves to do stupid stuff, like swimming in the icy lake or cliff diving.”
Interesting, that was Sheriff Garland’s theory, too, I thought.
“It’s sad, really. I just don’t think kids that age realize they have limits, you know?” Mitch asked.
“Limits?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
Mitch’s brow furrowed. “Well, they’re not invincible, you know? But they all act like it, especially when you start factoring drugs and alcohol into the mix. Faerywood Falls has taken a lot of precautions about stuff like this over the years, but they can’t prevent every accident.”
“You’re right about that,” I said. “So what are people saying about it in town? About the death, I mean.”
“You’re the first one that seems to know much about it,” he said. “The one thing that I did hear is that a bunch of her friends were there, too. Which got me thinking…” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Aren’t the majority of murders committed by someone the victim knew?”
A chill ran down my spine. Almost every murder that happened in Faerywood Falls was committed by someone the victim knew. Siblings, lovers, friends… “Yeah…” I said. “It’s like how most car accidents happen within a few miles of home, right?”
“Exactly,” Mitch said. “Those kids are young. They’ll probably do everything they can to cover up their involvement with the whole thing. I bet you that some or all of them know more than they’re letting on.”
My jaw clenched. “I thought the same thing,” I said. “But the police will have to handle it from here. Sheriff Garland is a great detective.” I didn’t think it was my place to tell Mitch that Sheriff Garland thought it was likely an accidental death, but I was honestly leaning more towards Mitch’s theory. Something was fishy about the whole thing, and with the way everything else had been happening around here, I wasn’t convinced this was just some drunken mistake.
“Well, I should probably head out,” Mitch said, glancing at his watch. “Wife and kids’ll be wondering what’s keeping me. You’ll have to come over for dinner sometime. I think you and Lizzie would really hit it off.”
I smiled. “That sounds great, Mitch.”
We exchanged cell phone numbers, and he grinned at me as he left the store, his dinner-plate sized hand held up in a wave as he walked past the windows to get into his car.
He was one I’d have to be careful with. He’d been exposed to a lot of information about the Gifted, but didn’t seem to believe it. Even still, he was smart, perceptive. He’d have to be, having been in the military. All those years of training would likely allow him to see right through me and my inability to lie about anything.
I returned to my tasks and finished cleaning up the store before I ran up and said goodbye to Mr. Cromwell, promising I’d be in on time the next day. He, as sweet as always, told me I didn’t have anything to worry about, and pressed a box of freshly made cookies into my hands.
“I was feeling peckish,” he said with a wink. But I knew better. He just wanted me to feel better.
“I don’t deserve you,” I said, hugging him tightly. It felt nice to be able to hug someone and mean it, and not have to say that I was tired or worried, and he would just know, and accept it, and hug me back until I felt better.
I got my purse and locked the shop up and headed out, ready for the day to be over.
Exhaustion is one of those things that’s never felt until it’s too late. Going and going throughout the rest of the day, I hadn’t felt it. But as I sat in my SUV on the way home, it clung to my muscles and my eyelids. Everything felt heavy, like I had weights tied to my wrists and ankles. My back was as straight as a board, and the knots in my stomach were tight and aching.
I was ready for a long lie down, away from people, away from noise…
But even if my body was ready for a rest, my mind was not. The whole day, it kept playing the morning over and over, trying to find the one clue I’d missed that would direct me toward an answer.
Why am I so unsatisfied with the idea that Annie died on accident? I asked myself. Not every death is a murder.
Yes, but this is you we’re talking about. The cursed one, right? Death and murder seems to follow you wherever you go, said another side of my brain in response to my own question.
I grimaced at that though, knowing how true it was.
I wasn’t sure how the magic of the forest worked, not really…nor much about the curse that had been put on me when my adoptive mother took me away from Faerywood Falls in the first place. But I did know that with each death, each case, I felt like I was getting closer to something. An answer to a question I’d never asked. A solution to a problem I was only vaguely aware of. I wasn’t sure, but it was like something big was on the horizon, and I was just navigating my way through the darkness in order to find it.
And this girl’s death had hit me harder than some of the others. She’d been so young. And even if her friends weren’t hiding anything, they deserved to know what happened to their friend. I wasn’t convinced that one or all of them didn’t know anything, but I was determined to get to the bottom of it.
Just before I turned on the dirt road that lead up to the Lodge, I took a left instead, and followed along the lake to my cabin.
I tried to fight the chills that ran down my spine when I laid eyes on it. Unconsciously, I reached up and rested my fingers against my throat, the feeling of Susan’s hand fixed tightly around it still fresh in my mind.
My heartbeat increased as I got out of the SUV, staring up at the front door. It was safe now. I knew that. But I still feared stepping inside.
Everything was how I liked it. My favorite purple throw blanket was still tossed over the back of the couch, slightly off to one side; Athena liked to sleep on the back of the sofa so she could look o
ut the window behind it. My favorite coffee mug was waiting patiently to be filled beside the single-serve coffee pot, a spoon already laid out beside it from the night Susan had broken in. My favorite pair of shorts was lying on the dining table with a spool of thread and tiny box of needles; it had ripped a few weeks before along the in-seem, and I’d meant to fix it while it was too cold to wear them. I’d meant to work on them on my next day off.
I swallowed hard, longing to find enough peace to come back home, the only place I’d found in all of Faerywood Falls that had felt safe to me.
And Susan Bennet took that from me so thoughtlessly…so selfishly.
I grimaced as I snatched up the bike key from its home inside a broken flower pot that I’d glued back together and hurried back outside before the panic welled up and spilled over.
The only way I was going to find clues was to look for them, and I decided the best place to start with was Sheriff Garland’s theory; that she fell accidentally.
The trail leading up to the cliff jumping area wasn’t far from my cabin; it circled around back behind the Lodge, overlooking the lake. A path connected the steep trail and the shore of the lake, where I’d seen families walk up and down from the water back up to the cliff so they could jump again.
But Sheriff Garland made it sound like there were higher, more dangerous cliffs.
The mountain bike that Aunt Candace had given me had come in useful so many times since moving to Faerywood Falls. Even though I hadn’t used it so much in the cold, I was glad for the alternate way to get around, especially through the woods.
It didn’t take me long to reach the rocky trail leading to the clearly marked jumping cliff that Mr. and Mrs. Bickford had made. The sign pointed off to the left to a lower cliff that was much safer. I walked down the short path and looked over the edge; the water couldn’t have been more than five or six feet below, maybe ten feet a little further along the cliff. Regardless, the water below was clear and open; the water was definitely deep enough, and so clear I could see all the way to the bottom.
Glancing upward, I saw the cliffs over my head jut out into the air. Those were much higher, and they seemed to trail further along the outside of the lake.
Those were the cliffs I wanted to inspect.
Hopping back on my bike, I found a less obvious trail, one that was steeper and craggy. I left my bike parked down by the sign Mrs. Bickford had made, and went up the path on foot.
It was muddy, and the steps were treacherous in places. I nearly slipped, throwing out my hands in front of me just in time to catch myself on the mossy stones.
When I finally reached the top, the cliff felt a lot higher than the others. The stones were slick, too, smooth from years of wind battering against it. Their faces were more jagged too, from chunks of the stone falling from years of gravity pulling against them, causing them to tumble down into the water below.
I could see why this place attracted daredevils. It was a glorious view, though, with the lake stretching out far below, standing out over the tops of some of the trees surrounding the cliff, and the feel of the wind brushing against me.
It was enough to make me nervous, so I only briefly glanced over the edge.
I could see the designated jumping spot much closer to the water, and from here, I could see that the water someone would land in seemed much deeper. The water far below where I stood was deep, too, but there were boulders jutting out of the surface, the waves lapping up against the sides of them. If someone jumped from here, it wouldn’t be all that unbelievable that they’d hit some of those stones…
Shuddering, I took a step away from the edge; standing there was giving me a little bit of vertigo.
I searched the ground around the cliff instead for footprints, but the only ones I could find were my own. The path looked untouched recently, as little weeds were peeking up through the dirt, and the grass surrounding it was untrampled and undisturbed.
I chewed my lip. That didn’t mean the sheriff was wrong, but I didn’t know if there were any other cliffs she could’ve fallen from.
“She wouldn’t have died jumping from down there…” I thought, glancing down at the lower, safe cliff. “Unless she didn’t know how to swim…?”
More questions filled my mind as I stood there, my eyes scanning the ground one more time for evidence of people being up there, especially people that probably wouldn’t have been trying to be careful to cover their tracks.
The sun was hovering closer to the horizon, likely moments from dipping beneath it. It was difficult to see much of anything in the oranges and pinks flooding the valley from the dying light, but I chanced one more look over the edge of the cliff…
And saw something moving down at the water’s edge.
It wasn’t directly below me, the movement. It was down away from the cliffs, along the opposite side of the cliffs from the Lodge.
Shadows. Nothing more than that, hiding behind the trees along the lake’s edge.
I stared down at it, my heart beginning to race. Whatever it was, it wasn’t moving again.
Crack!
The sound of a twig snapping behind me made me jump –
But before I could turn around and confront the sound, something enormous slammed into me, knocking me forward.
I fell flat on my chest against the rocky ground, my shoulders bouncing off the very edge of the cliff, my head swinging downward into nothingness, empty air.
My hands scrambled to clutch onto the edge for support while my head filled with blood from dipping over the side. My mouth went dry as I tried to push myself backward –
But I didn’t get far, as a scorching, stinging pain bloomed on my back, right between my shoulder blades.
I let out a cry as I realized something, like talons or nails, had sliced through the jacket on my back, cutting all the way down to my skin, which it cut as easily as ribbon or paper.
It was agonizing, unlike any pain I’d felt before. Every muscle in my back protested as I tried to move, tried to get out of the way. If I lay there, the claws would strike me again. I was as sure about that as I was about my own desire to survive.
With a yelp of pain, I pushed myself over onto my back to confront my attacker, and my jaw dropped open.
The figure standing above me was indecipherable. A huge, looming shape, blurred by shadows and movement. Man or beast, I couldn’t tell, but it was larger than anything I’d ever encountered in the forest before.
And that genuinely frightened me.
It raised its paws, or hand, or limb high into the air above me. In the brief moment before it swept it down to strike me again, I rolled over onto my side away from it, just barely dodging it.
The blurred, shadowed hand or paw slammed into the ground just beside my head, sending dust and rocks flying into my neck and scalp as I covered my head.
There was a high-pitched zing that sang through the air, and another blurry shape shot through the darkening sky toward me.
I shrieked and covered my head, and with another sharp snap, something struck the ground on the other side of me.
When I opened my eyes, I saw an arrow sticking out of the ground beside me.
My eyes widened in horror; I was getting attacked from two sides?
I rolled away from the arrow and managed to push myself to my feet, despite the searing pain in my back.
The enormous shape let out a horrible, rumbling growl, and another limb morphed out of the blurriness like a cloud of smoke and tried to strike at me.
I jumped out of the way, and my feet skidded across some of the loose stones along the edge of the cliff.
Another arrow shot through the air, coming from somewhere below me, sending the edges of my hair flying, narrowly missing me.
I was an easy target standing out there.
And the giant beast…it was blocking my way. There’d be no way I could outrun it or try to get past.
I glanced over my shoulder, my mind racing a hundred million miles a
minute.
It was stay up here on the cliff and either get shot by an arrow or get mauled by the beast…
I swallowed hard.
…Or jump off the cliff and take my chances.
The image of Annie’s body floating in the water filled my mind, her body bloated and swollen from all the water.
That could be me if I chose to jump.
That likely would be me.
But if I stayed up here, I’d definitely end up like her anyway, wouldn’t I?
I gritted my teeth, the pain in my back so severe it was making dark circles form at the edge of my vision, and I turned around and jumped off the side of the cliff and into the open air waiting for me.
5
The moment I jumped, something happened within me. It was like all the stress I’d been feeling over the last few weeks disappeared. The fear I’d been wrestling with was gone.
It was like I’d finally succumbed to it, allowing whatever it was that was chasing me and frightening me so much to finally catch up to me.
It was relief, pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less.
I wasn’t even sure if I’d land. I wasn’t sure I cared anymore.
…Until my legs struck bone-chilling water.
I gasped just as my head plunged beneath the surface, my mouth filling with murky lake water. It filled my lungs as I sunk deeper beneath the water. Fear washed over me, clearing my mind, reminding me where I was, and that I was now on a timer to survive.
I wasn’t ever really a strong swimmer. Living in a land-locked state for most of my life, my mother found value in other things for me to do, like ballet and music lessons. She thought me learning to ride horses and how to bake was more important than swimming.
Normally, I agreed with that.
But now, as my chest screamed for air, I wished she’d made a different decision for me.
I pumped and pushed with my legs, using my arms to pull myself up through the water.
The last light of day was just barely visible at the surface, glinting off the top of the waves, the air where I knew my salvation waited.
I pushed and grabbed, but it didn’t feel like it was getting any closer –